Showing posts with label 114th U.S. Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 114th U.S. Congress. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
On Saturday, I wrote up a startling fact, brought to my attention by the organization FairVote, about American politics. In the new Senate, the 46 Democrats will have received 20 million more votes than the 54 Republicans.'Murrica.....
- Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, for whom I served as Field Director this past year, becomes the new Congresswoman from the 12th Congressional District of New Jersey, replacing Rush Holt. Congresswoman Watson Coleman is New Jersey's first African-American Congresswoman.
- Senator Cory Booker, for whom I also worked in 2014 in Central New Jersey, is sworn in for his first full term as United States Senator today.
- Congressman Rick Nolan, whom I traveled with all over Iowa for Senator Dodd in 2008, survived a tough challenge, in a tough seat, and is returning for another term.
- My own Congressman, Matt Cartwright, returns for a second term. He surprised me with how good he did in term one, so I look forward to term two.
- He wasn't re-elected or anything, but Senator Menendez is becoming a real powerhouse in the Senate. He will serve as ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Beyond that, I hope all of my fellow Democrats who go to the Hill, or are being sworn in, have a great term.
From Off the Charts Blog:
To put this into simple terms, the House is ordering the Congressional Budget Office to assume that cutting taxes will always spur growth. Like it didn't for much of the 1980s, and it didn't under Dubbya. They will simply say it does, and we'll all have to accept it as gospel. We'll assume that rich people and corporations will take the tax cuts that Paul Ryan wants to give them, and re-invest them in hiring Americans, even though that makes absolutely zero economic sense for the rich people or corporations, and even though they haven't behaved that way before. We'll abandon a non-partisan model of budget projections and research, one that has angered Democrats and Republicans alike in the past, in favor of a completely politicized, voodoo economic model.CBO and JCT already provide macroeconomic analyses of some proposed bills as a supplement to the official cost estimates they produce. These analyses typically present a range of estimates of the legislation’s impact on the economy.The new House rule, in contrast, asks for an official cost estimate that only reflects a single estimate of the bill’s supposed impact on the economy and the resulting revenue impact. By incorporating additional revenue in the official cost estimate (as a result of an estimate of economic growth), this would enable lawmakers to write bills with deeper tax-rate cuts, or smaller offsetting curbs on tax breaks, than they otherwise could do.The economic impact of even a well-designed tax reform plan is likely to be modest relative to the size of the U.S. economy. But the estimates of revenue gains from the plan’s estimated dynamic effects could be large in the context of current fiscal debates. Those estimates could also be highly dubious, depending on the models and assumptions used.For example, JCT estimated that the tax reform plan that former Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp produced last year could generate between $50 billion and $700 billion of additional revenue over the decade through faster economic growth (see chart), with the $700 billion estimate reflecting a series of very rosy assumptions — including the assumption that a future Congress will stabilize the debt as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) by approving large spending cuts that aren’t part of the Camp bill. If highly optimistic economic and fiscal assumptions like these are included in official cost estimates but then fail to materialize, the result will be higher deficits and debt. And as CBO, JCT, and other analysts have warned, tax cuts that ultimately expand deficits can slow economic growth, rather than increase it, because the higher deficits can create a drag on saving and investment.
CBO, RIP.
Monday, January 5, 2015
So, here's what to know:
- Speaker Boehner will not just be opposed in tomorrow's speaker-election by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the Democrats, he'll also have not one, but two Republican opponents. Nine Republicans have committed to voting against the Speaker.
- Speaking of nine, there are nine freshman Republicans in the Senate.
- All nine of those Republicans are committed to eliminating the entire Food Stamp program.
- There will be 20 women in the new Senate, and 84 in the House, both actually are good historically.
- There will be one House Majority Whip, Rep. Steve Scalise, who spoke to a David Duke sponsored conference.
- The new Senate Armed Forces Chairman is Senator John McCain, who has called for wars in Syria, Iran, and Iraq in recent years.
- There will be two African-American Republicans, Congresswoman Mia Love and Senator Tim Scott, an improvement.
- Two African-Americans will be in the Senate as well, Senators Scott and Booker.
- There will be one climate-change denier serving as Chairman of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.
- There will be one non-lawyer, Senator Grassley, reviewing judicial and justice department nominations as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- Banking and the Budget in the new Senate will not be overseen by experts, but by Alabama Republicans, Senators Shelby and Sessions, while Mississippi's Thad Cochran gets Appropriations. In other words, banking regulation and how we spend are money on the Senate side will be controlled by the most conservative, least productive economically, region in the country.
- Paul Ryan, rejected by America in 2012, will now chair the House Ways and Means Committee.
- The House did escape having convicted felon Congressman Grimm there tomorrow, by days.
Well, what can I say. This group of rejects in charge of passing our laws will be our new legislative branch. The 114th Congress will be a failure that spends 80% of it's time posturing, and passing laws that do more harm than good. Celebrate America, you elected these goons!
Vote for Louie.
I'd argue Democrats would be smart to vote for Gohmert on ballot one and help him win, but that is so cut-throat that it almost feels dirty. With that said, Democrats have been saying since 2009 that the GOP House Members are a bunch of lunatics and deadbeats who want to make sure President Obama fails. Not that John Boehner has courageously fought against them, but the crazies who drive these policies think Boehner is their enemy, and they want to replace him with a real nut. Well, Democrats would be strategically smart to help them do that, so the GOP can prove they are a bunch of lunatics and deadbeats. Yes, the results for the country may be catastrophic. The country did elect those catastrophic results in the mid-terms though. The resulting chaos would perhaps teach the country a lesson about voting for nut-jobs. After the second attempt at impeachment, and third shutdown over fictional ACORN funding, perhaps people would get the point- modern conservatism is insane.
Obviously, Democrats won't do this. We'll hear about the cost of default and other issues. Adult responsibility, I guess.
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